Imus Estate land key to Villar-Ayala deal

MANILA, Philippines - The parcel of land in Imus Estate was
crucial to Adelfa Properties and to the entire Villar Group since this
was part of what was then a pending financial transaction with another
property company, Ayala Land.

At that time, Villar’s real estate companies were burdened with
heavy debts as a repercussion of the 1997 Asian financial crisis.
Villar’s companies, including the former flagship company, Camella
& Palmera Homes could not pay debts that peaked at P12.28 billion
in 2001.

Villar’s companies resorted to payment-in-kind arrangement, or
dacion en pago in industry parlance. They were using real estate assets
to pay for the mounting obligations.

According to a labor complaint filed by Restituto Mendoza,
a Villar firm lawyer who was dismissed, a dacion-en-pago was arranged
to settle some P300 million loans of the different real estate
companies of Villar with Ayala Land.

An independent confirmation with banking industry sources, however,
revealed that the Villar group of real estate firms defaulted on a loan
with Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI), a sister company of Ayala
Land. The pending dacion-en-pago deal involved using properties of the
Villar Group to settle the loans with BPI, which would then turn over
these properties to Ayala Land.

The Villar group has lined up the Imus Estate property in the Ayala Land-BPI deal.

“Adelfa (Properties) could not afford to lose this case,” Mendoza wrote in his labor complaint.

Ayala Land then warned Adelfa Properties that it will be constrained
to rescind the dacion-en-pago agreement if the land case was not
settled.

Other documents we gathered confirmed that the Villars had a
transaction with the Ayala group that were covered by real estate
mortgages. There was also a sale and purchase agreement between
Yuchengco-led , which is the banking arm of the Villar group.

RCBC Savings was then acquiring assets of Capitol Development Bank, including its 57 branches. Part of the
of the RCBC-Capitol Bank deal was: “A duly executed copy of the letter
agreement between Ayala Land, Fine Properties, and the Spoused Manuel
B. Villar Jr. and Cynthia A. Villar, to be conformed to by the Buyer,
in respect of certain properties covered by the real estate mortgages
securing certain loan accounts…”

Fine Properties and Adelfa Properties are both part of the Villar group of real estate firms.

We sent several emails and text messages to Ayala Land officials to
ask confirmation about its warning to Adelfa Properties and how the
dacion-en-pago transaction went. As of this posting, we have yet to
receive a reply. (abs-cbnNEWS.com/Newsbreak)